


Safeguards

by Seaward



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 10:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaward/pseuds/Seaward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atlantis is flooding. Rodney worries it's his fault. John really wants to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safeguards

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Elayna and The Guy for taking time to look this over. Any remaining flaws are mine, but I'm new at this, and I tried!

Atlantis was flooding. Water had been seeping in for over an hour, and nothing Rodney tried was making any difference.

“What have you idiots done now!” Rodney shouted at the lab in general.

“This is new. You have been doing all that is new. We have been working all the time here while you explore. Maybe you ask yourself, no?” Zelenka said with this head buried inside the guts of a machine to Rodney’s left.

The problem was, Rodney thought Zelenka might be right. Rodney had spent the last two days trying to identify Ancient technology in the East Tower with John. He’d been enjoying it, too. He’d kept the other scientists away as if it was his own private adventure, well his and John’s. They still didn’t know what most of the machines in the East Tower were for, but some at the top did seem to regulate environmental controls. It was looking increasingly likely that this was all Rodney’s fault, not that Rodney would ever admit it.

Then John popped in the lab door, as he kept doing, and said, “McKay, tell me you have this solved.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

“Clueless, much?”

“No. I’m doing my best.”

“Maybe your best isn’t quite good enough right now.”

That broke it. That broke something in Rodney that he’d known was close to snapping for a while. He was the resident genius. It was his job to save Atlantis. Eventually he was going to fail. Eventually might be now, and if so, everyone would have plenty of time to express their disappointment as the city gradually sank. For a moment Rodney couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He feared he would hyperventilate and tears would start streaming down his face. He started to run, to get away, but he had to say something as he ran past John. “EastTower. I think we must have broken something.”

John followed him at a run all the way to the top room in the East Tower, the one with what they thought were environmental controls.

Rodney stood in the center of the room, turning around in a blind panic. He had no idea what to do and was so upset he couldn’t think. He couldn’t think, and they were all going to die.

“What now, McKay?”

“I don’t know. Start turning things on.”

“Okay.”

In the middle of the craziness, John trusted him. Rodney could see the tight muscles in John’s arm as he reached out to activate each of the machines that they’d spent hours testing one by one in recent days. They’d never turned more than one on at a time. They’d been cautious, so they wouldn’t do any damage they couldn’t control, but however cautious they’d been, it hadn’t worked. Rodney watched as John turned on one machine after another. Still, Rodney couldn’t think of a thing. He was supposed to be good under pressure, but this time he was failing. He was failing hard.

Soon John had all the machines in the room lit up. He came to the center to stand beside Rodney, bumping Rodney’s shoulder. Both of their bodies were tight with anticipation, but John’s face looked calm. He still believed that Rodney would get them out of this, like he always did.

Rodney had nothing, and he felt like his brain was going to explode. He wanted to run away, to throw himself into the ocean and drown, to fall asleep and never wake up.

He ran downstairs to another huge machine they’d found. This one he didn’t understand at all, but they’d deciphered two labels. One side seems to say “repair” and the other “help.” There was a place for someone to sit on each side with a console between them. There were places to put their hands on sensors not completely unlike those in control chairs. This machine had frightened Rodney the most of anything in the East Tower, and he thought they might need two people like John to even make it work. But now he was out of ideas, and the words “repair” and “help” were pretty tantalizing. Rodney was ready to try something desperate.

John seemed to be on close to the same page. “Are you sure?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

“Just remember, if we all die this time, it’s your fault.”

John had been joking, but the words hit Rodney like stones. John sat down in the “help” chair, placed his hands on the sensors, and everything started to glow. Rodney sat beside him in the “repair” chair and placed his hand on the sensors there.

Suddenly he was sucked into someplace else. Everything around them was bright, white light. He and John were floating, facing each other, just inches apart. But Rodney could still feel his chair, like they were sitting in invisible chairs in some unformatted virtual space.

“Oooookay,” John said, “this is different.”

“Can you tell how it works?”

John’s eyes flashed a brief unfocused look, as if he was trying out different words to think at the machine. Then he sat way back in his chair and scrunched his forehead in a look somewhere between worry and pain.

“What?” Rodney asked.

“You can’t see that?”

Rodney realized John was focusing on the air just in front of Rodney’s face. Then John glanced down as if looking at something table high between them.

“Whatever it is, I’m not seeing it. Tell me.”

“There’s words, in red, a warning here,” and he pointed to the space in front of Rodney, “and smaller words here” and he pointed to the lower area. “It’s in Ancient, but when I focus on part, I think something’s trying to translate, to explain it for me.”

“Well, hurry up and tell me what it says. Maybe this can help me save Atlantis.”

John squirmed in his invisible chair, looked away, and then looked back at whatever Rodney couldn’t see right in front of his own face. “I don’t think this machine does what we thought it might.”

“Are you sure? If we’re just wasting our time, then we should get back upstairs and try to deal with the flooding from there.”

“I don’t think it’s going to let us leave right now.”

“What!” Rodney tried to get up and found that while he could move either arm, either leg, even lean forward quite a ways, he couldn’t leave his invisible chair. Across from him John wasn’t even trying. John looked unhappy, sort of majorly unhappy, like someone just ran over his dog or wrecked his car or both, but he wasn’t trying to fight it.”

“What does it say?” Rodney half shouted.

“It says,” John swallowed and continued with forced calm, “'Suicide risk. Do not leave.' McKay, you haven’t been thinking about killing yourself have you?”

“What? No, not seriously.” Rodney could feel his face heating up. “I mean, I was upset and couldn’t think. Maybe I imagined throwing myself in the ocean, but it wasn’t like I was going to do it this minute. I wouldn’t do that to you, to Atlantis. Maybe this machine just isn’t calibrated for my inferior brain.”

“Inferior brain? Who are you, and what have you done with my Rodney McKay?”

The phrase “my Rodney McKay” echoed through Rodney’s brain. John hadn’t said, “the real Rodney McKay” like in the quote but “my Rodney McKay.”

“McKay?”

“Did the machine tell you to say that?”

“What?”

“What you just said.”

“You’re asking if it writes my jokes? No. Actually,” John glanced down, “it wants me to reassure you that anything you say here will remain private. Evidently I’m going to forget everything you tell me here once we leave the session, which I happen to think is a lousy idea, because I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of you out there.”

“Oh.” Suddenly Rodney realized he’d been given a real chance here. For once he could tell someone the truth, all his doubts and insecurities, all the terrible things he thought about sometimes. He could tell John without any fear of hurting John or causing John to think less of him, because John wasn’t going to remember this. It could actually work. Maybe he could sort through enough of his personal baggage to go back and work, at least long enough to save the city from flooding.

“So maybe I overplay the genius thing sometimes. I mean, you qualified for MENSA. You could have had a PhD in math. But you also know how to organize people, what to say, how to make them like you. Then you come here and everything in the city lights up and works when you just think at it. So maybe sometimes I feel like my brain is kind of inferior.”

“What? No, McKay, you’re the smartest person I know.”

“That’s what I want people to see, Sheppard. Sometimes I believe it myself. It’s all I’ve got.”

“You are a genius, McKay, but that’s not all you’ve got. You’ve got friends, a great sense of humor, amazing work ethic, loyalty, dedication. You’re healthy, good looking, lots of energy.”

Rodney felt a lump in his throat. If John really meant what he’d just said—he’d even called Rodney good looking. Rodney felt a lump forming far below his throat and glanced down to his lap. What he was feeling might be happening to his real body, back in the machine, but there was nothing to give him away in his virtual self here in the room of light. Still, if John wasn’t going to remember any of this, maybe it was Rodney’s one chance to say it.

“There’s something else.”

John nodded, and he glanced down briefly as if checking for instructions, but he didn’t say anything.

“If you’re not going to remember this anyway, then I guess it’s okay to say, I’ve kind of had a crush on you.”

“Really?”

Rodney couldn’t interpret the look on John’s face if his life depended on it, not a warm reception, but at least John wasn’t horrified. “In fact,” Rodney said, “I think I might be in love with you.”

John leaned forward, looking at Rodney’s face from just inches away. Rodney could see the smoky eyes with their pupils beginning to dilate right in front of him. Then those eyes drifted downward as if fixating on Rodney’s lips.

Rodney leaned forward as far as the chair would let him. He could feel John’s breath on his face, on his lips. Then John closed the distance and kissed him.

It was a soft brush of lips at first. Then John’s tongue was tracing Rodney lips, making Rodney shiver with desire. John’s tongue pushed in, across Rodney’s teeth, behind his teeth, circling his tongue. Rodney’s mind was exploding. He’d never been kissed like this before. It sent waves of warmth through his body, right to his cock too, and Rodney was really glad that reaction didn’t show in here. It didn’t seem like they could get any farther from their chairs anyway.

When John finally pulled out of the kiss, they were both left gasping, and Rodney wondered exactly where the line was between what they experienced here and what was happening back in the machine.

John sat looking blissed out and blank for long moments and then his mouth opened in some kind of shock. “Are you saying you were close to suicidal because my brain can do things here that others can’t and because you think you’re in love with me?”

“No.” Rodney didn’t like how dirty and nasty that made it sound, even if John wasn’t going to remember. “I admitted to sometimes thinking your brain might be better than mine in some ways, and I admitted that I’m in love with you. And those two are not related, or at least not directly, just so you know. But this whole thing with the machine thinking I’m suicidal is just a mistake. I have a dark mind, maybe. I think about suicide now and then, maybe every few days, but I’ve been that way since I was a kid. And I haven’t made any serious attempts since I was in college.”

“You tried to kill yourself in college?”

“Just a couple of times. I wasn’t sure I was as brilliant as people wanted me to be, and I didn’t have any real friends, so I was lonely.”

“And you feel that way here? Do I make you feel that way?”

“Well, just a few minutes ago you told me my best wasn’t good enough.”

“I was teasing.” John looked worse than Rodney felt now. “I thought you knew that much. I would never—Rodney, I love you, too.”

Rodney just sat there, as if all his strings had been cut. He was sure John would be glad not to remember this conversation afterward, but Rodney was torn. He believed John meant what he said, at least in this moment, meaning John loved him, or at least could love him. Rodney was going to have to live with knowing that, and in a way it proved he wasn’t so alone and really did have at least one very close friend. Maybe they could even be something more, given that kiss.

Rodney took a deep breath and realized this couldn’t happen on the outside. John would never say he loved Rodney or kiss him, because they had to work together, because his military had rules about things like this. Rodney told himself it was just as well. The hurt and self-doubt inside of Rodney was too dark for John. Optimistic, easy-going John didn’t need that extra burden. It wouldn’t be fair for Rodney to put that on John in real life, and he realized he couldn’t kill himself here either. Even if John wasn’t going to remember saying he loved Rodney, on some level it was true and Rodney knew it. He couldn’t kill himself in Atlantis, because he could never do that to John.

Now John was doing something with his hands that Rodney couldn’t figure out. It looked almost like he was using a small tool, but there was nothing. Seeming to finish, John looked to where there had apparently been words before, just in front of Rodney’s face. “The suicide warning is gone now. I think the machine would let us out, but is that what you want?”

“Yes! We have to save Atlantis!”

“But Rodney, I’m not going to remember this, and I want to. Please, will you tell me? Make me listen?”

“John, it would just hurt you to know.”

“But what you said, what we both said. And we both thought we were alone.”

John looked so sincere, so open, and so kissable. But Rodney had never seen John look like that in real life, and he doubted he ever would. Rodney could survive alone, and John would probably be better off without him. For now, Rodney needed to convince John to let this go, to get them out of here.

“I’ll try, John, if there’s a good moment sometime. But right now, you need to get us out of this machine.”

John nodded, trusting Rodney again. Like a blink, they were opening their eyes and looking at each other across the big machine as it was powering down.

“It didn’t work, did it?” John said.

“Yes, I think it did.” Rodney smiled, and raced up the stairs, John tight on his heels.

The machines they’d left running now had screenfuls of data. Rodney couldn’t understand half of it, but he rushed from one to the next with growing excitement. He was able to think again, and he saw a pattern between the different displays.

“Look, John. Here and here and here. These measurements are getting out of whack in some way that coordinates between systems. If you can communicate to the machines that we need to bring those three readings back to where they were before, I think that will stop the flooding.”

“You think?” John asked.

Rodney shrugged. “Genius, remember?”

John smiled and reached out to the technology of Atlantis. In less than a minute, all of the readings were returning to safe levels.

Rodney spoke into his radio, “Is it working?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth’s voice replied. “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.”

“It’s really John doing it. I just had to point him at the right machines.”

“Well, congratulations to both of you. You seem to be saving Atlantis once again.”

Rodney smiled. He was glad everything had worked out, again, but in the pit of his stomach he knew something similar would happen again and that he wouldn’t always be able to meet everyone’s ridiculous expectations. He knew at the heart of it, he was basically alone and that he’d never tell John what they’d talked about in the machine.

Still, he felt better. They were all alive. John was beautiful standing with his arm stretched forward in the light of the Ancient machines, every muscle highlighted and his face so strong and confident. Maybe it gave Rodney a little thrill to remember John saying he loved him, but that little bit was enough.

When John finished, knowing it was done in whatever way he did when he worked with Ancient machines, he turned toward Rodney and bumped his shoulder. “We did it again.”

“We did.”

They walked back quietly, comfortably, much more slowly than on the way out.

When they were just outside the operations tower, John said, “Want some coffee? There might even be some jello left.”

“I think I’ll go to bed,” Rodney said.

“You’re getting too old for this, are you?”

“Look who’s talking.”

They parted, and nothing had changed for John, and Rodney smiled, because he really did have friends.

Back in his room, he already had his shirt off when there was a knock on his door.

He opened it, and John walked into his room without a word. As the door shut, John reached out with both hands, catching Rodney’s jaw in one and his neck in the other. He pulled Rodney forward and kissed him, just like in the machine, a soft brush of lips and then John’s tongue searching past Rodney’s teeth and having its way with Rodney’s tongue. It was too much to process. Rodney responded with his tongue and was instantly hard and wanted to press his body up against John’s. John looked so real and kissable, but Rodney knew this shouldn’t be happening. He shook his head. “You shouldn’t remember.”

“I don’t,” John said, pulling back a few inches, but keeping one hand on the back of Rodney’s neck. He held out the other arm and on it was written, very sloppily, as if the writer couldn’t see the pen he was holding, “R loves U.”

“I don’t think it’s fair that I don’t remember, but I guess I must have planned for that when I wrote myself the note. And whatever else I may not know, I do know, Rodney, that I love you, too.”

And they were kissing again, and their bodies were pressing up against each other, and it all felt so right. Maybe there were lots of reasons not to, but John had known all those reasons when he chose what to write on his wrist, and Rodney couldn’t help but love him a little bit more for that. Maybe neither one of them had to be alone after all.

The end


End file.
